Thoughts, rants, plans – my little corner of cyberspace

Author: rdswarup

It was a mild autumn evening in London, still light, the leaves still green on the trees, and I had popped into the Marble Arch branch of Marks and Spencer on my way back from work. A woman in traditional Arab dress – black burqa, her face covered – queued in front of me to pay. A companion rushed through the queue to join her, and as she pushed past me, she didn’t offer a word of explanation or apology. Once the two reached the head of the queue, they were imperious, demanding size changes and replacements in loud, accented English from the flustered young cashier.

‘Imagine the cheek,’ the elderly lady behind me whispered. ‘And after what has just happened.’

What had just happened was 9/11. It was the evening of September 12, 2001, and the world had changed forever. In a concerted series of attacks orchestrated by Muslim terrorist outfit Al Qaeda, planes were hijacked and flown into New York’s World Trade Centre’s twin towers and into the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth plane, also heading for Washington, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the hijackers were overcome by passengers.

And the two women in front of me, privileged and badly bred, suddenly seemed to so many to be the emblem of a hostile Islamist ideology. They were ‘the other’, and while people from other cultures can be badly bred and imperious too, the two women in M&S seemed to epitomise all that the Western world found incomprehensible.

Soon it wasn’t just those dressed in Islamic clothing who were seen as ‘the other’. Soon it was men in beards, including innocent Sikh gas station attendants in America who were attacked and killed. Soon it was anyone of colour doing anything – anything at all – out of the ordinary. Few in London will forget Jean Charles de Menezes, a twenty seven year old Brazilian man who was killed by police in Stockwell after he was wrongly suspected of being involved in the 2005 London bombings.

Over the past few days, it feels like the world has been changed forever once more. In a series of concerted attacks on November 13, eight militants belonging to the Islamic State (ISIS) laid siege to a host of Parisian venues. Suicide bombers detonated bombs outside the Stade de France, then playing host to a football match between France and Germany. Gunmen held a Parisian concert hall hostage, and others fired guns outside bars and restaurants in the centre of town. Over 132 were killed, and hundreds more injured. The French President, Francois Hollande, called the attack a war on France. Borders are being closed, and the unending wave of immigrants from Syria are being blamed for the atrocities. It is important to note, though, that at least one of the Paris attackers was a French citizen. And that ISIS is attacking more than just France. The attacks on Paris follow ISIS led attacks on Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Turkey and Tunisia, and can rightly be recast as a war on humanity. As an attack on civilisation. A war that the overwhelmingly vast majority of refugees is looking to flee.

The way to fight this war, in the near term at least, is almost certainly through combat. But in the rush to eradicate ISIS, it is important not to alienate whole populations. Israel’s aggressiveness towards Palestine hasn’t led to any lasting solution in the area. And funding militants to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s led to the birth of the Taliban. Recent interventions in the Arab world have had a large role to play in the rise of ISIS. There is no good terrorist, and once you give credence to a vengeful ideology, there is no hoping for peace. The allies of today in this demented, ceaseless holy war are very often the adversaries of tomorrow.

It is important too, to consider the realities closer to home. Rising Islamophobia in the aftermath of 9/11 is sometimes blamed for the fundamentalisation of parts of Britain’s Muslim population. This may well be true. Muslims – women with their heads covered, men in beards – are conspicuous enough in times of tension. And as the rhetoric in the West has teetered between the twin poles of tolerance and vengeance, it is understandable that a tiny minority in the Muslim community have felt isolated. These people are almost invariably young, and like most impressionable teenagers, they are looking to fit in. They don’t want to be seen as ‘the other’. And when the streets of their native Britain don’t feel hospitable, they start to look to others that do. These people, children still for the most part, are prime prey for fundamentalist voices advocating a ‘purer’ way of life. And it is unutterably sad that there are women among the number who feel drawn to join the Islamic State, even as they are denied so many basic freedoms under an extreme and literal interpretation of Islam.

As the world rushes to retaliate to the latest declaration of war by Islamist terrorists, it is important not to be knee-jerk in our reactions. It’s important not to confuse those fleeing extremists with the extremists. It is important not to identify the moderate face of Islam with a tiny, fundamentalist minority. It is important not to blame ‘the other’, such as the innocent Canadian Sikh man – who had never stepped foot inside Paris – who found his image photo-shopped to fit the picture of one of the Paris attackers. It is key not to answer intolerance with intolerance. Just as it is vital not to answer militancy by funding militancy. Promoting secularism is the answer, in the fractured Middle East just as much as in the West. Humanity’s best hope lies in the rallying cries of the French Revolution – Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité! Because that indeed is something worth fighting for.

When Napoleon was a young soldier, he visited a renowned palm reader to ask if he would ever become Emperor. The palm reader told him dismissively that he didn’t have a fate line.

Napoleon drew his sword and etched a deep line – and so a fate line – on his palm. He turned his bloodied hand to the palmist and asked, ‘How about now?’

His subsequent exploits are now the stuff of legend, and what is clear is that Napoleon wasn’t willing to compromise on his ambitions. I admire his attitude, even though I prefer a less gory way of making my way to my preferred destiny.

Determination and persistence pays off. I believe that with the right attitude, and with a reasonable understanding of my talents – I know I’m never going to become a singing superstar – I can succeed. This belief is what kept me going when I left my lucrative career in investment banking and turned to writing. I hadn’t studied English literature at university. I didn’t have a degree in creative writing. I hadn’t contributed to the university newspaper as a student. In short, I had to start learning my craft from scratch.

What I did have was a love for a certain style of writing. I knew my genre. I knew the themes that mattered to me and those I wanted to give voice to. I spent hours – months that turned into endless years – writing. Practising my craft. Tossing away reams of paper, starting the same story over and over again. And reading through as many books as I could get my hands on.

Slowly, I came to realise some of the flaws in my writing. My tendency to over-explain. I put it down to my being a bossy older sister, but I learnt, and still am learning to curb that instinct. My invariable bent for quiet stories. For the ordinary and the unremarkable, as I felt they mirrored real life most closely. I soon learnt these stories were unsaleable – often unreadable in those early iterations – and learnt to steer away from them. There is still a lot to learn, but any read through my cringe-worthy early writing assures me that I have since improved.

But all throughout my writing, I have always believed that any success or failure in landing a publishing contract would be mine. And that it would be talent and hard work that would take me there. Not luck, not contacts, but my blood, sweat and tears. The latter two especially; I wasn’t planning on a literal interpretation of Napoleon’s immortal gesture.

And when, on an early morning of this year, my agent emailed to tell me that she had found a publisher for my book, I felt it justified my effort. Of course I knew the publishing industry was recovering from a stultifying financial crisis, and that the upward climb of eBooks – and hence eBook retailers – had finally stabilised. The publishers were now happier to take a chance on a debut author, and so my timing was fortuitous, but I felt my unsuccessful submissions from years before had their worth. They allowed my agent to figure out the editors who were receptive to my work, and equally, they allowed me vitally useful feedback on the weaknesses in my writing.

Still, the outlook was bleak. Early in 2014, my father showed my horoscope to an astrologer and asked if I would ever be published. A natural question, given how unpromising things had been looking for so long. The astrologer pronounced that I would be published, but that the stars were inauspiciously positioned. Things would shift by September 2014, and I would then – and only then – get a contract.

I told my father I didn’t believe in astrology. That it would have to be my writing and not my stars that would get me published. September 2014 came and went. A major book fair was held in Frankfurt in October, and I half expected – despite my protests – to get a book deal. Nothing materialised, and though disappointed, I felt justified in rubbishing my father’s belief in the stars.

Then I landed my deal in January. Three short months after my inauspicious period was due to pass, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was me or my stars that had succeeded. Perhaps it was all luck after all. Perhaps it was finally meant to be.

But I have never believed in luck. Not in relying on it, in any case. That would have led to a passive attitude to my life. I wouldn’t then have kept on practising or chipping away at my flaws. I wouldn’t then have formed the links with the editors who liked my style of writing.

Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book Outliers examines the factors that contribute to achievement. He mentions culture, environment, being in the right place at the right time – all of which point to the fate I take exception to. He then mentions his 10,000 hour rule, which represents the hours of practice a person put into their field of specialisation at an early stage. Programming computers for Bill Gates, practising the tabla for Zakir Hussain, or batting for Sachin Tendulkar.

And though I hesitate to offend any benign luck that’s looking my way, it is this, the practise – my 10,000 hours – that have helped me become a better writer. The writer who sent submissions a few years ago with her long, wordy, quiet stories wouldn’t and shouldn’t have been published. No matter how promising her stars were.

I may not have won my publishing contract this year had my stars remained inauspiciously aligned. But I do know that I have, in my way, been working towards fashioning my own fate line. With a pen, in my case, and not with Napoleon’s sword.

I received a panicked text from F at around 1pm. ‘There’s something we’ve forgotten. I just know it.’

We were planning a joint birthday party for our two sons. We had been living and breathing the party for the past two months. I’d wake up in the morning to a flurry of emails from F, with ideas for party activities, goody bag fillers, decorations and cake recipes. I would reply, telling myself I wouldn’t spend more than ten minutes on the party planning before getting on with my day. There was writing to be done as well as bringing up my two active children. There was no way I was wasting my day in minutiae. Before I knew it though, half my morning would have disappeared. My days became full of plans, of budgets and contingencies. We met a couple of times a week for coffee and planning sessions, and as D-Day loomed, our coffees turned to drinks. We were both all too capable of micro managing – no compliment to either of us – but by the morning of the party, we were sure we had everything in hand. All that needed to be done was to get everyone ready.

‘Relax,’ I replied. ‘We’ve got everything in hand.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ I asked, and in a moment of premature insouciance suggested that the greatest worry we faced was a catfight between the school’s two feuding mothers.

We arrived at the venue with a quarter of an hour to spare. We had hired out a soft play facility for the first hour of the party, with a room booked at a nearby restaurant for the meal and cakes. We hovered around the management desk, and reconfirmed our booking for the soft play centre.

‘Yes,’ the manager said. ‘You’re booked in from 4-5.’

‘There’s a party in there at the moment.’

‘They’ll be asked to leave before your time will begin,’ he told us confidently.

We nodded, straightened out our children’s hair, and waited for the guests to arrive. A few minutes before four, the manager approached us. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it looks like the party in there has another hour left on its contract.’

‘But we booked the 4-5 slot.’

‘Yes you did,’ he agreed. ‘and we have them down as having booked the 3-4 slot, but they have a contract that says 3-5pm.’

We saw red. A couple of guests had begun to arrive, and we were faced with the prospect of telling them there was no party. That they would just have to loiter for an hour before returning for their meal. We expressed our frustrations to the manager, and he consulted his notes again.

‘And, I said. ‘I called yesterday to reconfirm. You said everything was in order.’

He looked up nervously.

‘You should have flagged up any problems then.’

‘Well …’ he hedged.

As we readied ourselves for battle, he blurted, ‘I will talk to the other party …’

There were at least 10 guests at the door by this time. We greeted them, and as we explained our predicament to them, my phone beeped. A last minute cancellation. F looked up from her phone in exasperation; she had had a cancellation too. We would have to change the table settings at the restaurant. Then we spotted a new problem. There were two unexpected guests in the throng. We had handed out invitations over a month ago, and set a two week deadline for RSVPs. We were providing customised goody bags, and had needed notice to organise all the details. Some guests hadn’t replied, and we had assumed they weren’t attending. Now we saw an unaccounted for mother-son duo happily tripping in.

‘Aren’t we going in?’ asked the mother breezily, pointing towards the queue by the door.

F and I looked at each other. Before we could reply, the manager returned and told us the other party was vacating the soft play facility.

We walked in, and as the children flooded in to play, F turned to me accusingly. ‘What’s the worst that could happen, you asked!’

‘My bad.’

‘The centre was double booked. We almost didn’t have a party. We’ve had cancellations and unexpected guests.’

But there was no time to talk. We had lost time in gaining access to the soft play centre and now we were due at the restaurant to sort out last minute details. We reorganised table arrangements and place settings, rushed to prepare an emergency goody bag for the unexpected guest, and before we knew it, it was time for the children to come in to eat.

‘I hope nothing else goes wrong,’ I said darkly.

The rest of the party passed in a blur. We seated the children and made sure they were fed. We averted seating plan disasters. We made sure the warring mothers were at opposite ends of the room. We spoke to friends and made sure they had drinks. We took photos. We didn’t notice when glasses of prosecco were pressed into our hands. We didn’t notice the children flood to the activity table we had so painstakingly prepared. For a brief, unseeing moment, we didn’t take in their sated smiles, their delight at the Lego and the worksheets and the face painter we had organised. We didn’t see their faces light up to see the Lego themed cupcakes we had baked for them.

We did notice with relief that here were no other disasters. The children were happy and occupied. There were no tears or tantrums. There was no clinging to parents. The parents were happy socialising too. There were no catfights.

And as the guests began to leave, the compliments began to flow. And we finally saw – in spite of the foreseen and unforeseen disasters – that the party had been the happy, relaxed occasion we had hoped it to be. We piled into our cars, the children fell fast asleep, and we realised this was now our moment.

F and I slipped out for a quick meal. ‘What’s the worst that could happen,’ she said to me, and we both laughed. We no longer needed to anticipate catastrophe. The sun was still out, the weather was mild, and our worries were behind us. A passing child waved to us, and as we smiled back at her, we realised that this was finally our moment to savour the party that had consumed us so entirely and for so long.

I was recently asked by a friend if I was going to vote in the upcoming elections.

No, I replied, explaining that there was no candidate I felt strongly enough about.

‘But you must,’ she said.

I told her I lived in a marginal constituency, where the candidate representing the ‘least worst party’ was certain to win. My vote wasn’t even required from marginal considerations.

‘But you must,’ she repeated passionately. ‘As a woman you have to vote.’

We fell into a discussion about how recently women had won – no, wrought – the right to vote less than a century ago. We spoke of the sacrifices they had made, the violence they had faced, and how they had to fight against their own social mores. We discussed the many parts of the world where women still struggled to get their voices heard. There were the obvious examples like Saudi Arabia, where women can’t so much as drive a car, but also the India I originate from – a vibrant democracy – where women often bear the shame of being raped. They are chastised for wearing inappropriate clothes or for being out of their homes after dark. The rapists’ actions are excused away by their feudal, patriarchal apologists – boys will be boys.

In these societies there is much work to be done to further female empowerment. Empowerment, perhaps, is an ambitious term. In many cases, work needs to be done to just keep women alive and safe. Girl foetuses need to be allowed to live; girl children need to gain access to food, healthcare and education; young girls need to be able to leave home for work or for leisure without fear; they need to be able to marry without the stain of dowry; they need to not be punished for infertility or for bearing girl children; and after old age descends on them and their husbands pass away, they need to not fear being thrown out of the homes they have created for their children.

These worries, these struggles they face, they seem so different from those that concern us in the developed world. I worry that I am expected to take on more of the duties around the home than my husband is. I worry about my daughter’s burgeoning love for dolls, even though I delight in her nurturing character. When I worked in investment banking, I rankled at the sexist office culture. Out of an analyst intake of 50, only 6 were women. Of course there are more serious infractions taking place against women in the developed world. Women are raped in the West too. They are groomed for sex too. They meet with violence too. But they are treated – for the most part – like the blameless, innocent victims that they are.

I have a foot in both worlds – as an Indian living in England, I identify with the issues faced by women in both cultures. There is no denying there is more work to be done in the developing world than in the developed. There is more absolute inequality in the developing world. There are more human rights infringed, and more women placed in daily danger.

But does this mean that I run the risk of forgetting the work that still needs to be done in the interests of equality in the West? Am I forgetting that work practices in the developed world still need to be improved, or that the everyday sexism that pervades our society still needs to be eradicated? Should I, as my friend suggested, be exercising my franchise as a duty to my gender?

On the whole, I think not. And this, I feel, is not an abandonment of my feminist duty. I greatly admire the women who went before me, the fearless trailblazers who often sacrificed family for career, all in order to achieve the rights that we now are able to take for granted. I truly appreciate all they did.

But my present apathy is a function of their achievement. The suffragettes and the feminists of the 20th century won us the freedoms we see as our birth right. My decision to vote or to abstain is as personal a calculation today as that of a man. My decision to study for a degree or to gain employment is just that, a private decision unprejudiced by my gender, even though these were hard fought freedoms too. True liberty is the freedom to choose. My greatest feminist endeavour now lies in campaigning for a woman’s voice when it goes unheard. Voting for an uninspiring candidate in a non-marginal constituency in an unexciting election – this mercifully no longer forms the greatest exercise of my strength.

I could have picked a better time to go away. The groceries I had ordered hadn’t arrived, and the meals I had planned to leave for them hadn’t been prepared. My family – husband, 5 year old son, 2 year old daughter – would have to fend for themselves. I imagined them eating junk all weekend – pizzas, burgers, endless sugar. And they weren’t in the peak of health either. My son had a cold, and my daughter was in the middle of potty training. The cold could be dealt with, but it was the potty training that really worried me. I was certain my husband would buckle under the pressure of accidents, dirty laundry and our daughter’s tears, and that he would soon have her back in nappies.

‘Don’t worry,’ said my husband, as I packed. ‘We’ll be fine’.

I closed my eyes with dread. I would have my weekend’s break to write in, but I fretted I would return to baby armegeddon. I imagined soiled carpets; unwashed dishes; my children noxious from too much sugar and too much TV.

And then I left. After about an hour, I checked in on things at home. They were sitting around the kitchen table, eating fruits and reading a story. So far, so good, I thought.

I got to my station. My phone reception started waning. I reached the retreat I was booked in to for three nights, and here too, there was no reception. There was some internet access, so I could keep in touch with my loved ones, and a landline where they called me once a day, but that was it. No mobile reception; no texts; no endless Twitter updates. No keeping in touch with everyone. I grumbled for a while, but in hindsight, this communication blackout was the biggest boon to me.

For better or worse, the members of my family were shackled to each other. They would survive a few days without me. In any case, there was nothing I could do about it.

I set to work. My lovely hosts Deb and Bob at Retreats for You took care of everything. Forget helping lay the table, we were actively – and assertively – discouraged from even tidying away our dirty plates. We got three generous meals a day as well as far too many sweet treats. All food preferences were catered for. On my stay, there were coeliacs, vegans, and mere eccentrics like me – eating chicken and fish but no red meat – and Deb somehow managed to cater for all our requirements. There was a roaring fire in the living room; there were hot water bottles in our beds at night. There was good wine and stimulating company at night, and we were free to have our meal served in our room if the muse proved intractable. There was a library filled with books, our clothes were washed for us and our jugs of water automatically refilled. There were bracing walks at our doorstep if we needed inspiration.

All our needs were taken care of, and all we needed to do was to write. In the beginning, it was hard. I found I had the attention span of a goldfish, and I suppose our lifestyles – with a million competing demands on our attention – are to blame. I always thought I was good at multi-tasking, but perhaps I was sacrificing my focus. Now though, I had no distraction. No excuse not to work. Not one single one.

So I wrote. Haltingly at first, but then with increasing fluency. I went for walks, I ate too much, and I finally sorted out the plot of a novel that has been inhabiting my consciousness for the best part of a year. I now know my protagonists’ names. I know what they look like; I know how they interact with each other. I know what drives them.

For my new knowledge of this world of my creation, my eternal thanks go to the gracious team of Deb and Bob. They allowed me space to escape my worries and to inhabit my characters’ worlds. They let me loose on their house in a dressing gown and slippers, and they let me imagine for four heady, treasured days.

And my children? They had a blast. They went to the park, practised their tennis, spent time with their father. They did eat more junk food than I’d like, but then it was a break for them too. And my daughter is still out of her nappies. There have been accidents, but everyone has survived. And as for me, I’ve been able to breathe in my book’s air, and that is worth more than I can ever express.

16 December 2012. As the rest of humanity slowed down for the festive close of the year, in India, things were building up to a shocked crescendo. We lit candles, we stayed out in the cold and fog, we as a nation battled police brutality, all in support of the nameless victim of a horrying gang-rape onboard a moving bus in Delhi on the night of 16th December.

Nirbhaya we called her; the fearless one. We honoured her for her spirit, for her will to live. For her refusal to feel shame for other people’s brutality. Nirbhaya herself died a few days later, succumbing to massive internal injuries, but the fire she had lit in India’s consciousness continued burning.

Slowly change was affected in India. Nirbhaya’s attackers were caught and all – barring one juvenile – were sentenced to death. India’s sometimes shrill media took up a drum…

We have all known weeks that drag on forever. Ones where the Mondays seep slowly into endless Tuesdays, which refuse in turn to give way to the promise of mid-week. By the time Friday rolls around, we’re ready to throw our hands up and give into the powers that be. Let it end, we cry, desperate for the relief that a brand new week will bring.

The past two weeks have been a bit like that for me. For my entire family, in fact. Torrid, never-ending.

There I was, still basking in the newness of the year. Still firmly sticking to my resolutions. I was disciplined with my writing. The edits I had struggled with at the end of last year now seemed under control, and I hoped to have the next draft of my novel ready by the end of the month. And I was sticking to my plans of posting fortnightly on this, my fledgling blog.

That’s when my husband (we’ll call him H, shall we?) fell ill. The kind of ill that stops you in your tracks. Nothing serious, no, just your seasonal ailment fraught with misery and self-pity. He coughed through the night, he monopolised the living room – colonising the sofa and the TV – so we had to step around him while feeling guilty for invading his space.

Work was impossible. Suddenly the complete burden of childcare fell on my shoulders. I undertook the school drop-offs and pick-ups, took the children to the playground. I did all the cooking, all the cleaning around home while H lay on the sofa and complained how exhausted he was.

And then, just as he was beginning to recover his health and equanimity, our two children came down with the flu.

At the same time.

They had been running around the place, clamouring to be taken out to the playground. We’d fetched their woollens; it being early February in London and all. And as I reached to lower my son’s jumper over his head, I felt something as comforting as a hot water bottle in bed at the end of a cold, gruelling day. Except, the comfort of this touch was fleeting. It was my son placing a burning hot palm on my face.

I turned to H. “I think,” I said, “he has a fever.”

H felt our daughter’s forehead. He nodded grimly. “She does too.”

Out came the thermometers. Both children registered a temperature of 40 degrees. Ignoring the genius of their synchronisation, this put paid to any hopes of our family outing. For the day, and for several to follow.

We gave up our work for a near fortnight. I forgot about my writing, forgot to check in on the world. We abandoned all hope of personal hygiene and routine. Instead we became soothing machines. We sang lullabies. We made puzzles. We read books. We cooked soups by the gallon. We fed them water, sip by slow cajoling sip. And in a move that saved our sanity, we let them watch TV.

It was bad, worryingly bad before it got better. And most worrying was seeing them listless at home. There was no clamouring to go out, to meet their friends. There was no stubborn insistence on doing things their own way.

They were too tired by their flu, and that, more than anything else, brought home to us how poorly they really were.

And then, one morning, my son woke up ready to return to school. “Not today,” I reasoned. “Wait till you’re better.”

And to my delight, he argued. He whined. He unleashed the dreaded ‘but I’m bored’. And I was thrilled. Finally, after the fortnight when time stopped for us, my son became conscious of how still things had really become.

My daughter was on the mend too. Her energy returned as suddenly as it had disappeared, and all at once, her toddler demands resurfaced. Instead of TV, it was now park, or blocks. She wanted to be on the move.

And they were suddenly hungry again. They turned away from soup now, from the lentil and rice khichdi that has always brought me succour when ill. They wanted pasta. The wanted cake. They wanted something different.

And as they discovered their resistance, as their voices grew plaintive and then high pitched, H and I discovered that after the weeks of bated breath, of sleepless nights and endless worry, time was starting to move forward for us again. Tomorrow I’ll worry about my missed deadlines, but today, while the clamour of bored, healthy, childish whining builds to its inevitable crescendo, I’m grateful for its noise.